Kooeh: A Timeless Delight is a heartwarming, cozy, narrative-driven restaurant management game developed and published by Twilight Foundry Games, an independent game studio based in Malaysia.
Released on June 16, 2026, on PC via Steam, the game takes players on a nostalgic journey to rediscover lost family recipes and revive their family’s restaurant. Inspired by Malaysian gastronomic culture and heritage, it combines cooking, restaurant management, and storytelling to celebrate traditional delicacies and preserve cultural memories.
Let’s get cooking!
The story starts with the main character losing tons of recipes from a book that he owned. Somehow, the book becomes magical, transporting our main character to another world that is also somehow familiar at the same time. Tana the Tapir is the first character he encounters in this new world, who serves as our guide for the game’s tutorial, as well as becoming your cute pal in this realm.
One of the main features of Kooeh is managing your own kuih shop, where you can sell traditional Malaysian delicacies and gradually expand your menu as you discover new recipes. Players begin with a selection of familiar favourites, including kuih lapis, ondeh-ondeh, and kopi o.
As you progress through the game, learning more recipes allows you to introduce additional items to your shop, giving customers more choices while getting closer to your goal of getting back to the real world.
However, before you can start selling these delicious treats, your character must first learn how to prepare them! This is where the game’s cooking mechanics come into play. Players must complete three types of quick-time events (QTEs) continuously.
These interactive challenges require players to pay attention to timing and react quickly to the prompts on screen. Once they are completed, all of the ingredients will be mixed to make the kuih.
Your performance in the QTEs determine the quality of the kuih you produce. Achieving perfect results across all three events rewards you with a three-star kuih, representing the highest level of quality. However, each recipe comes with its own difficulty level, meaning some kuih may require several attempts before you can master them.
Although the timing can feel challenging at first, players will gradually become familiar with the mechanics through practice. This adds a rewarding sense of progression, encouraging you to improve your cooking skills while unlocking the potential of your growing restaurant. I enjoyed the process of growing more selections of kuih, such as ang ku kueh, pineapple tart and even vadai.
Serve up!
Once you have mastered your kuih recipes, it is time to put your cooking skills to the test by serving customers! In Kooeh, customers will arrive in waves, with some choosing to dine in while others prefer to take their orders away.
To help players stay organised, upcoming orders are displayed above the customers waiting in the queue, allowing you to plan which kuih to prepare next. This system adds a layer of time management to the gameplay, as you must keep track of multiple orders while ensuring everyone gets their treats.
Remember those kuih with different difficulty levels? Well, they also come with different cooking times! More challenging recipes can take longer to prepare, making it important to plan ahead rather than wait until an order comes in.
Each customer has a patience bar that gradually decreases while they wait, so you will need to serve their orders before they run out of patience. Thankfully, the game allows you to prepare kuih in advance and store them on your serving tray. The number of kuih you can keep ready depends on your tray upgrades, making preparation and stock management essential to running a successful shop.
Fortunately, you are not expected to manage everything at the same pace throughout the entire game. Players can purchase upgrades to improve their restaurant’s efficiency, including reducing the time needed to cook certain kuih. These improvements become increasingly useful as customer waves get busier and your menu expands with more recipes.
We will explore the upgrade system in greater detail later, but for now, it is worth remembering that a well-prepared tray and a little strategic planning can make all the difference between a satisfied customer and one who walks away disappointed!
Customers with lore
Once in a while, you will meet different types of animals as your customers! Some of them will look different, and can eventually talk to you. It will start out as a normal interaction where you speak to the customer about their kuih, but will eventually progress to more personal details. It is helpful to know what each of these special characters are going through.
Another interesting detail is when we met new characters, you will also get new customers. For example, the first new character you meet will be a bear named Adam. It seems that this fella couldn’t accept that his boss has quit their job, and he has to take over now. After we are finished with Adam’s lore, we will start to get bears as customers!
Similar events will happen with other characters that you will meet, such as an elephant, a crocodile and more! You can look for info on the animals through your logbook, which will also provide more insights on the characters, such as what day they will drop by the store. This includes other customers that players will unlock later on.
One thing that is similar between all of the characters’ timelines is that they will start rating the kuih you serve them. As the story progresses, the characters will praise how your kuih is starting to taste better.
Just as a heads up, some of the customers have more touching stories than others, though some are pretty chill. I have to say though, you will become attached to even the more simple characters, since their stories don’t unlock in one go. The game gives time for each character to grow on you, making you hope that they will come in the next day to continue their lore. As a bonus, you can also obtain recipes from the characters as well.
Stocks and upgrades
After learning how to unlock recipes to sell, you are able to open your stall and earn a profit. This is where we will be serving customers the kuih. Different types of kuih take different amounts of time to cook, hence you’ll need to strategically cook something beforehand to manage customer wait times.
As the days go by, you will unlock more recipes and also meet a lot of furry friends that relate to Malaysian culture. Each unique customer also provides story updates day by day, so you’ll want to wait for them to come by so you can see their story reveal itself.
At the end of the day, you will be left with 2 choices, which is to buy upgrades or unlock more recipes. This is also where the game will save your progress. I call these moments ‘prep sesh’ as we get leftover ingredients from the other stores and the wishing tree. You can also buy your essentials and recipes from Uncle Sammy’s Shop.
For Uncle Sammy’s Shop, you will start out with a purchase limit of 3 stocks, though you can level up with the more times you buy from him. The higher the level, the more ingredients you can get. Other than that, you can also get recipes from this shop! The recipes are surprisingly affordable, and better yet, you can get more than one recipe from this shop. This makes sure that you’ll unlock all the recipes in no time.
The other way you can get the ingredients is from the Wishing Tree. You are limited to 3 types of ingredients, but can earn 10 of each type… if you pass their QTE events! As you can see, QTEs are a common feature in this game. However, if you fail, you will still get around 3 to 5 pieces of the ingredients you want, plus one that you didn’t wish for. It’s still a win-win situation if you ask me.
To tell the truth, you will get an abundance of ingredients every day. I collected around 1k+ pieces for an ingredient without even trying. So you can go crazy with looting for ingredients, but you do have to set your priorities straight and and see which ingredients will be used more often. You can always refer to your book’s recipe section to see how much of each ingredient you will use once a customer orders it.
Upgrades will be very helpful as you can maximize your profits and even making your store management more easy. This can range from a faster stove, to making more space on your tray, and even earning more tips!
After you hit a milestone of around 20k coins earned, you can FINALLY expand your shop with the help of our bestie, Tana. Which of course, comes with more upgrades. These include a faster cooking stove, the addition of more chairs, and a range of different cosmetics to keep your shop looking interesting.
Verdict – Very Hungry
Kooeh: A Timeless Delight is an overall refreshing experience. Players will be able to dive into Malaysia’s traditional food culture, allowing newer generations to learn more about these wonderful cuisines. The characters also have relatable attitudes that most Malaysians will recognise immediately.
Design-wise, the game was able to give me a very cozy and calm time, with the sound effects giving a nice ASMR experience. However, some of the interactions were a little confusing. Occasionally the player is prompted to move around, but it is not immediately made clear that they can now do so as the chat box remains on screen. This can make the game feel as though it has frozen, leaving the player unsure how to proceed while attempting to close the chat box. There are also interactions with certain sprites that are a bit tricky to trigger.
However, overall, it is a really good game for those who need a slower-paced experience, especially if you’re playing with friends who can react to your gameplay. And you will surely start to crave for kuih too!
